Booker showed MAGA Trump is more Thurmond than Eisenhower

Senator Cory Booker made history this week, speaking on the Senate floor for 25 hours and 5 minutes. He was protesting the Trump administration’s cruel, corrupt, and unconstitutional policies. In doing so, Booker shattered Strom Thurmond’s infamous 1957 record of 24 hours and 18 minutes. Back then, Thurmond was protesting the Truman administration’s fair, inclusive, and constitutional civil rights legislation.

Ironically, Thurmond delivered his filibuster under Republican President Eisenhower, who backed the Civil Rights Act Thurmond sought to block. Thurmond, then a Democrat, stood in racist defiance of even a lukewarm step toward equality. Booker delivered his under Republican Trump, who’s trying to dismantle the Black civil rights Eisenhower backed.

In other words, Trump has more in common with Thurmond, a racist Democrat, than with Eisenhower, a fair-minded Republican. That’s why Booker’s speech, rooted in calls for justice and bipartisanship, was clearly meant to flip Thurmond’s legacy on its head. And in some ways, it did.

Booker’s speech wasn’t strategic

Booker is winning praise for the substantive, symbolic, and viral nature of his speech. But let’s be clear: it did nothing to disrupt or derail the advance of Project 2025 — Trump’s dystopian blueprint for government takeover.

The timing didn’t land. The stakes, at least legislatively, were low. No vote was delayed. No policy was blocked. Frankly, in a political era where headlines vanish within hours, Booker’s feat felt more like an open mic at C-SPAN than a wrench in the machinery of Trumpism. Sure enough, with cable news obsessing over Trump’s looming tariffs today, you’d never know Booker made history yesterday.

His moment would have mattered far more if it coincided with an actual vote on a Project 2025 priority. You know, like right before the vote — when senators have SUVs revving up to whisk them to the airport for weekend flights home.

Moral victory, racial resonance

Still, there’s no denying the moral and racial resonance of the moment. For decades, White men like Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, and Chris Murphy have tried to make a name with long-winded speeches. But it was this Black senator who finally dethroned that White segregationist. Not to mention that Booker did so inside the very institution that once fought to keep men like him out. That’s no small thing.

Missed opportunity

And yet… if you’re going to call it a marathon, why not take it all the way? Booker would’ve sealed the metaphor if he had pushed just a little longer to 26.2 hours. Instead, he yielded the floor at 25:05 — just shy of making the symbolism literal.

A historic feat? Yes. A strategic blow to authoritarianism? Not even close.